Memory Capacity in the Elderly

The article “Morphometric and Histologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity” by Tamar Gefen, Melanie Peterson, Steven T. Papastefan, Adam Martersteck, Kristen Whitney, Alfred Rademaker, Eileen H Bigio, Sandra Weintruab, Emily Rogalski, M.-Marsel Mesulam, and Changiz Geula was used in a talk given by Tamar Gefen. This study focuses on a group of 80 plus individuals that display episodic memory functioning of someone between the ages of 50-65. These unique individuals are referred to as “SuperAgers.” An experiment was conducted with two control groups: middle agers (50-65 years old) and cognitively average elderly (same age as SuperAgers) and one experimental group: SuperAgers. With using the MRI, scientists were able to analysis each individual’s scans and come to certain conclusions about SuperAgers. They found that these individuals displayed the same or greater thickness as the middle-aged control in their anterior cingulate cortex. Compare to the cognitively average elders, the SuperAgers also displayed a thicker cingulate cortex. They also found that SuperAgers had an abundance of VENs, which enhance the thickness of the cingulate cortex. Scientists came to the conclusion that this thickness may contribute to the preservation of cognitive and intellectual functioning in individuals who are 80 years or older in age. These findings lead scientists to believe that there could be possible biological factors to resistance for age-related diseases.

            The article, “Forget about Forgetting: Elderly know more, use it better” from Science Daily also focused on memory capacity in the elderly. This article believes that older people are slower because they retain a lot more information compared to younger people. They used the example of a computer database; if you keep adding more and more files to a database, the slower the computer will work. Similarly, if an elderly person cannot remember someone’s name, it might have to do with the fact that in the past couple of decades there have been more diverse names. Therefore, since there has been a remarkable increase in the number of names used, there are significantly more names for the elderly to remember. Even a computer would have a difficult time locating a name in today’s time with the increasing diversity and number of people. To support this claim that the elderly are slow because of the amount of information they have acquired over their lifetime, scientists performed a “paired-associate learning” test. They compared results from younger people to the elderly and found that the elderly took longer because they were sorting through what is a nonsense pair and what pairs connected whereas younger counterparts were not able to do this. This proves that older people are not weak or slow but actually know more than we think.

            Both of the articles discussed, “Morphometric and HIstologic Substrates of Cingulate Integrity in Elders with Exceptional Memory Capacity” and “Forget about Forgetting: Elderly know more, use it better” explore memory capacity in different ways. Gefen believes there is a biological reasoning for why some older people have excellent memory. Her research focused on how the anterior cingulated gyrus thickness and VENs contributes to the memory of the elderly. On the other hand, the article from Science Daily took a less biological approach. They believed that age does not mean one’s memory is weak, but rather they are slower because they have acquired so much information over the span of their lives. Even though both articles view memory capacity in the elderly in different ways, they both contribute to the overall progression to understand how the human brain functions as people age.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140120090415.htm
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